


blurry

by OedipusOctopus



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged up characters, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Futurefic, I'm pretty sure anyway, M/M, Reunion, open ended happy ending, past lovers reconnecting after ten years, there's coffee involved bc it's my lifeblood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26605996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OedipusOctopus/pseuds/OedipusOctopus
Summary: Asahi hadn't meant to leave Nishinoya the way he did, but he's a coward. Always has been, always will be.But, just like last time, Nishinoya pulls him by the hand into the future.Together.
Relationships: Azumane Asahi/Nishinoya Yuu
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	blurry

**Author's Note:**

> hnnng i thought up this angsty conversation between past lovers asanoya at 3 am and i couldn't get it out of my head so HERE YOU GO
> 
> title from [blurry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjr0hBHEVaQ&ab_channel=HopelessRecords) by [stand atlantic](https://open.spotify.com/artist/1W2Fv4YUnjC8hx2qQd6fGh?si=SpIY7VwWQKCqLd85x9sPTQ)

It shouldn’t be happening. 

Not today, not like this. 

But Asahi’s life has always had a spectacular way of going sideways when he least expects it. 

It was a normal morning. His normal morning running path was perfectly, normally just moist enough to give under his heavy footfalls, but not so moist that the dirt doesn't spring back. The normal awkward wave and half smile was delivered to his weirdly not-actually-a-running-buddy running buddy who frequented this path on normal mornings like this. The hair on his chin started itching like normal at the two mile mark. The normal ache in his ankle that started when he was twenty-four radiated up his shin at two-point-five miles, like normal. 

Less normal is the unmistakable, wonderfully unique trill of Nishinoya Yuu's laughter echoing off the walls of his normal, every-morning-at-the-same-time coffee shop. 

Maybe the most abnormal thing is Nishinoya awake before the hour of 11 am.

Of course, Asahi has to tell himself, routines change in ten years.

People, too, probably. 

He slows down until he comes to a stop at the edge of the sidewalk, only the width of the street between Nishinoya and himself. 

He can't catch his breath as he takes in the sight of a twenty-seven year-old Nishinoya Yuu; his hair standing on end like it hasn't budged an inch in a decade, his shoulders narrow but no less powerful than a ten ton truck, that cheerful, wide grin stretched across his face.

And yet, Asahi can barely recognize him, with his skin aglow a golden tan, his chest held high with a confidence no longer projected to obscure insecurities, but an ego entirely genuine.

Hands dotted with silver scars that do nothing to detract from the length of his elegant, bony fingers that flex over the cardboard sleeve of the disposable to-go cup of Asahi's normal coffee joint. 

There's a word for this kind of serendipity— Oikawa had launched into a long-winded tirade during the last absolutely-not-a-third-wheel lunch with Suga and his over-excitable boyfriend. 

_ Fiance. _

Whatever. 

Synchronicity, maybe. 

It was only last week his mom pestered him about 'that one short fellow, the overzealous one that gave all the nice compliments,' which he'd readily brushed off with some comment on globe trotting in his twenties. 

It was only three days ago Daichi told him Nishinoya was back in Miyagi, in Sendai. 

It was only twelve hours ago Asahi had hovered the cursor over the  _ book ticket _ button on a shinkansen ticket back to Tokyo in a panic-induced need to escape. 

Synchronicity, surely. 

He can’t seem to catch his breath, even though several minutes must have passed in the time that Asahi has been staring at Nishinoya the same way a child would stare at a ghost in the corner of their room. 

“Asahi!”

It’s been all too easy to imagine this moment nearly every day for the last ten years. Going to college, thousands of hours poured into internships, starting a brand,  _ becoming  _ a brand— through all of it, there was always a Nishinoya-shaped void. There was always a chance, though slim it may have been, to fill it again. Perfect fit, or otherwise. But the gripping anxiety that curled in his gut at the thought would always send him back to his former high school self, too nervous to do anything, too charmed by a boy with a mile wide smile, too afraid of the world to move on. 

But it’s here, now, and Nishinoya is jogging over to where Asahi is standing like a giant doof with flushed cheeks and sweat-damp hair clinging to his temples. 

The grin is gone. Those lips that Asahi pretends not to feel phantom brushes of are pulled into a tight line across Nishinoya’s face, and it doesn’t fit him. 

Asahi wants to cry, a little. 

“I didn’t know you were back from Tokyo.”

Nishinoya’s voice is different, he thinks. There isn’t a trace of the carefree happiness Asahi is used to—what Asahi remembers. 

That awful twisting feeling sinks deep into his gut. 

“A-ah,” Asahi stutters. He pushes his toe against the painted concrete of the curb. Nishinoya stares at him from two feet away. “My mom fell ill after Fashion Week, so…”

It’s hard to tell if Nishinoya is actually taller now, or if it’s because he’s standing high and as tall as he can on the sidewalk while Asahi stays on the dirt path. “Oh, that sucks.” Nishinoya sucks air through his teeth. “I’m sorry.”

“N-no, she’s okay now. I’m sticking around for a while until too many responsibilities pile up.”  _ No, _ he really shouldn’t have said that. It sounds like an invitation, like he’ll be available. He’s not, he can’t do this, he really needs to get home—did he forget to lock his door?

“Oh.”

Oh.

Oh?

_ Oh? _

Asahi racks his brain, trying to think of what this particular  _ oh _ could possibly mean.  _ Oh, _ that’s nice.  _ Oh, _ maybe I’ll see you around.  _ Oh, _ if you’re here I need to book the next flight to France.  _ Oh, _ great, I’m stuck with this big lug in this too-small town.  _ Oh, _ neat. 

There’s too many things it could mean, and Nishinoya is still standing there, coffee in hand, staring up at Asahi without any indication of what he’s thinking and it’s insane because Nishinoya is the most expressive person Asahi knows— knew— has known— 

“I knew you were in Miyagi though!” he blurts out, because he’s still a bumbling idiot, no matter how many magazine articles are written about him or how many times he’s been recognized internationally for his work or how  _ adult _ he thinks he’s become— how removed from his entire high school experience he is. 

“Oh.” This time, Nishinoya’s face twists, his ears redden, his lips turn downward. “And you didn’t think to call me? Try to find me? Reach out in any way at all?”

“I…”

Nishinoya steps closer and lifts his right hand. He looks down at the coffee in his hand, tilts his head, contemplating, as if he’s about to throw the thing in Asahi’s face.

It would be hard for Asahi to blame him, really. 

Instead, Nishinoya sets the cup down on the ground carefully before taking a step closer, closer, closer, until there is a scant six inches between them. He stabs a finger into Asahi’s chest. “It didn’t occur to you at all, did it?” Accusatory. 

Asahi swallows thickly. His throat feels dry all of a sudden, and he wishes he’d grabbed a water bottle before he left his house this morning. “I… didn’t think you wanted anything to do with me.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” 

It’s the most Nishinoya thing he could say. Simple. Straightforward. As if it’s obvious. No hesitation, no stuttering, not even a moment to think through it. Instinctual. It makes Asahi’s stomach clench, makes his blood roar in his ears. 

“We had something special.”

The late nights squished together in his childhood bed, the rush of adrenaline that followed every intertwining of their fingers, the heart-wrenching elation of winning next to each other, the breathless words whispered behind the gym, the wanton moans in the darkness— it all pushes to the front of Asahi’s brain in a rush. He thinks he might throw up, and Nishinoya still has a finger jammed into the centre of his ribs. 

“We did... right?” 

Nishinoya’s voice grows small, quiet, as if the softness of his breath would dampen the doubt. 

It rings louder than the roar of a thousand dragons, in Asahi’s ears. 

“Of course we did! It’s… what I did. When I left.” He doesn’t say  _ the first time _ , but he knows Nishinoya knows. “You were angry.”  _ So you’d be angry again. _

“Damn straight I was angry!” Nishinoya shouts, and Asahi counts himself lucky there aren’t any passersby this early in the morning on this side of town. But Nishinoya doesn’t even seem to care about who’s around as he jabs his finger into Asahi’s chest again and continues, “You left the club, you left volleyball, you left the team, you left—” Nishinoya takes a deep breath and relaxes his fingers until his hand is splayed across the smooth plane of Asahi’s chest, right over his rapidly beating heart. “You left  _ me _ . I was supposed to be there for you, but you wouldn’t let me!”

Asahi feels all the blood drain from his face. He doesn’t know where it goes, because the tips of his fingers are suddenly numb. Nishinoya is right, of course. He’s only stating the facts. But Asahi can’t help feeling the way he does. He knows,  _ he knows _ he fucked up so unbelievably. But it’s not fair that he has to stand here and listen to Nishinoya’s voice crack with repressed emotion—repressed for so, so long. Asahi feels his own emotions stir under his skin, but he can’t—he doesn’t know how to say all the things he wants to say, what he  _ needs _ to say. 

“But you came back.” Nishinoya’s hand slides down Asahi’s chest slowly until it falls away, dropping limply at Nishinoya’s side. “You came back, and we kicked ass. And we rekindled our whole thing! Or did I imagine the last eight months we spent together?”

As if struck, Asahi inhales sharply. “I…” he breathes out, once his lungs don’t feel like raisins shriveled up under the intense heat of Nishinoya’s gaze. 

“Did it mean nothing to you? Was I just an easy fuck? Stress relief while you dealt with entrance exams and being a precious ace?”

“Of course not!” The words pull themself from his vocal chords without a thought. “How could you even think that?”

Throwing his arms in the air in obvious frustration, Nishinoya shouts, “Because you left me!  _ Again! _ ” 

“I  _ graduated, _ Noya—”

“Oh come on, that’s total bullshit and you know it! You stopped responding to my texts, didn’t pick up my calls. You completely shut me out!”

The blood in his veins somehow feels like hot lava and ice shards at the same time. The place where Nishinoya laid his hand tingles. “I… I’m sorry.”

Nishinoya’s lips pull tighter across his face. It’s not fair, the pain seeping into his eyes, the obvious anger boiling under the surface, and the way Asahi still thinks he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on. 

God, Nishinoya really is so fucking beautiful. He’s spent many nights thinking to himself that he never deserved to hold such a magnificent human being in his arms, not when he does shit like  _ this _ . Like running away in such cowardice, like making Nishinoya so upset.

“I don’t want an apology.”

No, Nishinoya deserves someone who won’t make him look like this, angry and spitfire in a completely different way than his normal positive demeanour exudes. “Then… what do you want from me, Noya?”

“I don’t know,” he says in that same effortless Nishinoya way that makes Asahi feel a little inferior. “Let me yell at you some more.”

Asahi, like always, can’t help but indulge Nishinoya.

So he does. 

Nishinoya yells, and yells, and at first it’s about how he felt during his suspension in his second year, and then about how he wishes Asahi stood up for himself more during high school, and then about the pitying looks Daichi would give him whenever he’d ask about how Asahi was doing in college in Tokyo, and then about suffering through his third year thinking Asahi hated him, and then it morphs into a retelling of the last ten years he’s spent travelling the world. 

His voice is still raised, and he’s way louder than anybody has the right to be at this hour when the sun as just barely crested the horizon, but he’s shouting about the time he almost got mugged in South Korea because someone mistook him for a teenage girl, and then he’s animatedly recalling the best coffee he’s ever tasted from this one tiny cafe in some desolate alley in some Italian suburb whose name he can’t remember, and then he’s rambling about a troupe of travelling musicians he shared a hostel with in Prague. 

The whole time, Asahi watches him in rapt fascination. Abject horror accompanies him when Nishinoya first talks, of course, but as he looks down at Nishinoya shifting his weight from foot to foot as he talks about his backpacking adventure through Europe, Asahi takes in the shape of his wide eyes, the slope of his nose, the sharp curve of his jaw, the curl of his fingers. 

Beautiful. 

His heart twinges beneath his ribs as Nishinoya’s infectious smile crosses his face during the tale of accidentally breathing in saltwater the first time he went snorkeling off the coast of Australia. 

He’s spent ten years with his thumb hovering over the call button on his phone. Ten years holding down backspace in his messaging app, wishing he had the courage to say something. Anything. 

Now he has the chance. Nishinoya is right here, right in front of him, but he can’t seem to find the words. 

Nishinhoya is recounting all the experiences that have shaped him, have changed him in some way from who he was, but Asahi is doing just as he always has. 

Asahi is still the same. 

Still the same coward he was all those years ago.

“...incredible, eating a meal made from something you caught yourself.”

Nishinoya quiets, letting silence settle over them. For the first time since he started shouting, Nishinoya looks around at the people starting to filter through the streets. 

“Okay, I’m done yelling at you.”

Asahi releases a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

Nishinoya doesn’t say anything in response, just bends over and picks up his coffee. He takes a sip from it, his nose scrunching as he swallows what must be lukewarm coffee by now. 

It’s too cute. 

Asahi clears his throat awkwardly, urging thoughts like that from his brain until he can figure out what the hell Nishinoya is doing. “What now?” he asks, stupidly, not sure if he wants to hear an answer at all. 

Rolling a shoulder nonchalantly, Nishinoya cocks his head. “I don’t know. What’s the most expensive restaurant in town an internationally successful fashion designer could take me to?”

“W-what?” Asahi splutters. He can feel his knees weaken, tremble. It must be because he hasn’t properly cooled off after his run. Must be. It couldn’t be because of the hope rising, swelling in his chest at the prospect of spending time with Nishinoya.

Nishinoya shrugs and takes another drink from the paper cup in his hands. A smirk quirks the corners of his lips upward as his eyes sparkle with something brilliant that Asahi has missed so viscerally. “I mean, you’re probably loaded now, right? You owe me for all that ramen I bought you back then.”

Asahi’s shoulders sag and he lets out a ragged breath, heart clenching at the implication. “Y-yeah. Of course.” He hopes the disappointment he feels isn’t painted across his words.

“Oh my god!” Nishinoya elbows Asahi in the arm, playful grin still playing on his lips. “I’m asking you out, you big idiot.”

“O-oh.”

Nishinoya laughs, loud and full and without a trace of the anger that seemingly consumed him earlier. The sound settles over Asahi’s spine, releasing at least a small portion of the tension nestled into his posture.

Asahi smiles slightly, finally taking a step onto the sidewalk. No, Nishinoya definitely hasn’t grown. “But you’re saying I have to pay. Isn’t the one who asks supposed to pay?”

Asahi’s heart flutters at the way Nishinoya’s smirk sharpens into something lethal, something that spells danger for Asahi’s delicate sensibilities. 

He reaches out with his free hand to grasp Asahi’s. 

“I never liked playing by the rules anyway.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! kudos and comments are always appreciated!!! <3
> 
> come scream at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/OedipusOctopus)!


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